Yom Chamishee
Thursday
14 Adar II 5782
March 17 2022
Photo of the Day
Note the black speck on the person’s finger. It is a Nano Torah.
Israel’s second astronaut Eitan Steva is about to take off to the International Space Station at the end of the month. With him he is taking a copy of the world’s smallest Torah produced by engineers of the Zisapel Center for Nano Electronics at the Technion.
Those engineers engraved the 1.2 million letters of the Bible book using a focused ion beam on a silicon chip coated with a thin layer of gold (the area of a grain of sugar). The words can only be seen using a microscope at magnification 10,000 times normal.
The Graphic of the Day
The countries in the world whose airlines are still flying to Russia.
In case you don’t read Russian, those countries are Algeria, Armenia, Bahrain, Belarus, Venezuela, Israel, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Mongolia, UAE, Serbia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan–not exactly a stellar group.
In short, this is more bad pr for Israel.
The Song of the Day
“Oh Putin, increase your attacks, deport the Ukrainian women to Palestine and we will marry them!”
The most popular song in Palestinian social media at the moment, sung by Palestinian singer Muhammad Arani.
Click here to hear (and see) it being sung.
Doesn’t this speak volumes about Palestinian culture?
Follow up to yesterday’s blog about the abominable Biden Administration
More specificity about the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Appeasement Deal . . . If you can believe this, the Biden Administration has agreed to waive sanctions so that Iran can pay Russia’s top energy firm $10 billion dollars to build a nuclear power plant in Iran.
That $10 billion will go straight to Vladimir Putin.
Obviously, nothing is more important to Biden than Iran—not even those being slaughtered in Ukraine.
The News on the Israeli Street
The daily Corona update . . .
6,738 new cases of Corona were confirmed yesterday bringing to 40,096 the total number of Israelis with an active case of Covid-19.
The positive test rate was 11.93%.
332 Israelis are in serious condition in hospitals with another 166 in critical condition on ventilators.
10,405 Israelis have died of Corona–4 since Monday.
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
Palestinian terrorists attempted to murder Israelis in numerous locations yesterday most notably at Tekoa, the T-Junction in Gush Etzion, the Ma’ale Amos Junction, near Othniel, at Hawara, and on Road 60 south of the Ma’ale Levona Junction.
A heartwarming story . . .
Yad Vashem (the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem) in conjunction with the Jewish Agency has been working to bring the Ukrainian grandchildren of “The Righteous Among Nations” to safety in Israel. As you may not know, “The Righteous Among Nations” are those individuals who have been recognized as having shown extraordinary courage in saving Jews during the Holocaust.
For example, Miroslava Katruk, 34, landed in Israel this week along with her two young children, five-year-old Alexander and three-year-old Anastasia, after being rescued from the Vinnitsa area.
Miroslava Katruk and her two children after having landed at Ben Gurion Airport two nights ago (photo Ynet News).
According to Yad Vashem, “Katruk is the granddaughter of Righteous Among the Nations Yelena Grinchik, who provided shelter, food, and medical care to a Jewish family during the Holocaust.”
Kolakevod to Yad Vashem.
TODAY’S BLOG
The Game Changer
The THEL laser weapon, first blogged about here in 2012.
The Opti laser gun, first blogged about here in August of 2020.
As you can see from the above previously posted photos on OneIsrael, Israel has been working on a laser system for intercepting missiles and projectiles for the last decade. We often wondered here why such systems were not being employed on both our southern and northern borders.
Apparently, the answer was simple: money and technology. In the first place, Israel was unwilling to shell out the money necessary to develop and employ the system, and secondly, the technology needed to be refined to make it more cost effective.
Hopefully, we have finally reached the watershed moment.
Benny Gantz (3rd from right) discussing the laser system at Rafael this morning.
“Defense” Minister Benny Gantz has now approved a huge order for the production of the system at a cost of hundreds of millions of shekels. According to Gantz: “Today we are taking a dramatic and important step towards a change in the battlefield, and an upgrade in the security of Israeli residents in the face of the growing threats on our border from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, under the auspices of Iran and terrorist organizations.”
In the first stage, the “Shield Light” system (being developed by the Ministry of Defense, Rafael, and Elbit) will be installed on the Gaza border.
Can you imagine an Israel that does not have worry about missile attacks from Gaza, Hezbollah, or Iran? It is frankly unimaginable.
Let’s hope the Shield of Light will be the game changer we have long dreamed of.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.